Winning Goal

Release Date: 2010

Publisher:

Developer:

Genre:

Sponsor:

Winning Goal is a free to play browser-based simulation game following the world-fever called World Cup last year. There has been absolutely no shortage of soccer management simulation games on the social platform, especially during the countdown to the worldwide carnival. Hithere, the publisher, still hoped the game can offer some unique flavors to fans that they’ve never experienced before. It’s been 10 months since the World Cup curtain came down, but the craze for Winning Goal is still ongoing.

Like SoccerStar, The goal of Winning Goal is straightly forward enough: build up the best-ever all-star lineup consisting of legendary real-world players from both past and present and from all over the world. The game starts you off with a basic team of five players who, based on their stats, are placed in the offensive, defensive and goalkeeping position. From here, you are able to challenge other friendly users. But keep in mind that, you have limited amount of matches available to play per day. The matches are just a visual display of your players’ comprehensions. You have no control over your players during the game, after all, you are the coach. The game takes 90 seconds for a full 90-minute match and everything is presented in a simplistic, top-down perspective with a narrative progress report scrolling past at the bottom. You may choose to skip the match simulation (by unlocking this feature from shop), which is a nice setting in Winning Goal.

To fill your lineup with biggest players in soccer, you can “scout” new players, which usually takes the greater part of ingame time to do. You pay for the scout and then system triggers countdown timer, when timer hits 0, you can recruit them into the team. There is also one of the social mechanics involved: your facebook friends can snatch up scouted players from you immediately without having to wait, if you wait around too long to recruit them.

Individual player stats can get boosted as reward of betting. This is actually a nice ingame mechanic for soccer fans, as you can bet on actual league games. By betting one of your players, and picking the winning team, he can also gain experiences and level up.

Skill tree, of course, is another indispensable feature borrowed from other MMOs. Skills are classified into two categories: Player and Manager, and are randomly won after each match during the price drawing. Chances are that you may also acquire a new item or even win a legendary player for your team if you are lucky enough.

Overall, Winning Goal can appeal to both soccer fan and sports management simulation fans. The betting is a wonderful way to marry the game with real world events. And collection elements will keep many players glued on their screens for a good long time, while the lack of player control is a bit disappointing. The game interface is clean and crisp. However, if you are unfamiliar with the intricate details of the game that makes soccer therefore beautiful, you will be probably driven away.